Participatory Design of Classrooms: Infrastructuring Education Reform in K-12 Personalized Learning Programs

Journal of Learning Spaces Volume 7, Number 2. 2018 ISSN 21586195 Participatory Design of Classrooms: Infrastructuring Education Reform in K‐12 Personalized Learning Programs Julie M. Kallio University of Wisconsin ‐ Madison The redesign of the physical spaces of classrooms and schools has become a prominent feature in many K‐12, personalized learning schools, though it is often dismissed as a peripheral aspect of change. Through observations and interviews at four public schools, I examine the affordances of these new spaces and the narrative of their design. I situate these spaces‐turned‐places as pedagogical artifacts in a participatory design process to examine how educators and students create functional and meaningful learning spaces. Reframing the physical spaces in this way suggests how the spaces may be supporting the sustainability of the reform. In an ongoing inquiry into personalized learning (PL) educational reform that redesigns school systems to support reforms in urban, suburban, and rural districts, I heard student‐centered, agency‐based models of learning educators and students speak at length, often unprompted, (Rickabaugh, 2016). PL draws on progressive ideas of about the ways they had modified their classrooms and engaging students as agents in their own learning with the buildings, from knocking down walls to adding sofa chairs support of digital technologies (Patrick, Kennedy, & Powell, and lamps (Author, et al., 2015). To them, their physical 2013). Educators often use the phrase “voice and choice” as spaces held meaning toward their efforts of transform what two strategies of engaging students as agents in their teaching and learning looks like in their schools. Yet some learning: listening to student voices for their input on what, leaders pushed back, saying, “It’s not about the furniture!,” when, and where they want to learn; and providing students and suggested that educators change their classroom with choices for how they will learn it and how they will furniture as a substitute for “real” pedagogical change. This show they have learned it. Notably, “flexible learning led me to ask: How do the physical spaces of personalized environment” is consistently included in descriptions of this learning programs become meaningful, learning places, and why reform, but the term “environment” in personalized does this matter to these educators and students? learning (DiMartino, Clarke, & Wolk, 2003), and more The vast majority of K‐12 students in the United States still generally in learning theory (Bransford et al., 2000), usually attend a physical school building ‐ five days per week, 181 refers to classroom culture, instructional strategies, and days per year ‐ as part of compulsory schooling. School digital and online spaces, not the physical spaces. While the buildings have changed over the course of history, from the relationship between digital technologies and flexible spaces one room schoolhouse to the comprehensive high school, yet has been explored in the context of higher education the basic unit of the classroom and the arrangement within (Strange & Banning, 2001; Oblinger & Lippincott, 2006), it remains remarkably stable (Jones, 2015). Indeed, the term empirical attention in the context of K‐12 personalized “classroom” prompts an image of desks in a row with the learning remains limited (Tanenbaum, Le Floch, & Boyle, teacher standing at a chalkboard within the “egg‐crate” 2013, is an exception). building, where each room contains a teacher and set of To explore this coincidence of the redesign of physical students (Nair & Fielding, 2005). This assumption of the spaces and educational reform, I use participatory design as physical classroom as the only place where learning happens a theoretical framework to ask theses research questions of or as an inert “container” for teaching and learning also four PL programs as exemplars of this phenomenon. This promotes assumptions of fractal‐like scalability, where framing attends to the features and activities the spaces classrooms are the units of change (Leander et al., 2010) or afford and the retold narratives of the designers and users the ʺblack boxʺ of reform efforts (e.g. Bryk et al., 2010). (in this case, the leaders, teachers, and learners), while Yet these PL educators are challenging this arrangement. understanding the goal as building agency among PL is an increasingly popular, whole‐school model of participants. This approach considers the physical spaces as pedagogical artifacts and provides insight into how this educational reform is mediated by and constituted in the Julie M. Kallio is Doctoral Student, University of Wisconsin ‐ physical spaces of these programs. I propose that these Madison. spaces‐turned‐places serve two functions for their designers 35 PARTICIPATORY DESIGN OF CLASSROOMS and users: the alignment of features and affordances with An interpretive approach requires a fundamental their vision of personalized learning and the construction of reconceptualization of the physical spaces as socially and meaningful learning places. Significantly, both of these situationally constructed, in which case there are two functions contribute to building the capacity, connections, components to be considered: the physical artifact itself and and sustainability required for the systemic transformation the process by which it is constructed. First, the physical that the PL model proposes. spaces, like concrete objects more generally, can be considered as embodied conjectures, representing the vision, Literature Review constraints, and context of their design, and are specific and I situated this study in the context of the physical spaces empirically available to be studied directly (Sandoval, 2004). and educational reform, and thus I focus the following Along these lines, Monahan (2002) considers this in review on how the physical spaces have been conceptualized proposing the term built pedagogy, or the ʺarchitectural as a lever for change, then contrast this with a conception of embodiments of educational philosophies” (p.5). Second, spaces as socially and situationally constructed. how physical spaces are socially constructed as places has Approaching the physical spaces as a lever for school change been well conceptualized in geography (Hubbard & Kitchin, is fundamentally about correlating the physical space with 2010) and is beginning to be applied in the learning sciences student outcomes, whether these are test scores or behaviors (Leander et al., 2010). Space can be considered the material in hopes of finding “what works.” For example, Cleveland dimensions and quality of built objects (Hatch & Cunliffe, and Fisher (2014) focus their review of the literature on these 2013), and place as a physical somewhere that holds meaning kinds of evaluative approaches. In this framing, there are and is continually redefined and negotiated as material and two areas of focus: how to assess the space and what to social aspects change (Casey, 1993). Importantly, this consider as outcomes, the latter of which is generally test characterization defines place as a process, not a static scores or student perception. arrangement of furniture. As such, I propose using a For the former, one approach is to categorize types of process‐based theoretical framework of design to explicitly spaces, and various typologies have been emerged, such as attend to physical places as pedagogical artifacts and how campfires, watering holes, caves, and life (Thornburg, 2007); place is constructed. together/public, together/private, alone/public, and Theoretical Framework alone/private (Steelcase, 2015); and knowledge showrooms, knowledge studios, knowledge boutiques, and knowledge Design is a process of solving problems that is user‐ salons (Mathews & Soistmann, 2016, p. 32). Others have centered, iterative, problem‐focused, and implemented in created assessment tools to map student use (Carpenter, context (Edelson, 2002). Design in education is most 2016). More broadly, but still within the lever approach, popularly associated with design‐based research (Design there are frameworks for understanding how spaces fit into Based Research Collective, 2003); however, design has also other reform elements. For example, Radcliffe’s (2008) model be proposed as a meta‐representation to understand of pedagogy, technology, and space as the three key education as “design for learning,” a process by which elements of next generation learning spaces, and the school artifacts are used to shape the natural processes of learning climate model (Owens & Valesky, 2007), an educational toward particular goals (Halverson & Halverson, 2011). leadership framework to inform change efforts. Artifacts are objects that can be physical, like desks and While the lever approach provides key insights into textbooks, or abstract, like schedules and evaluation policies, spaces and outcomes, in the context of an emerging reform, and they can be externally or locally designed (Halverson, it is more helpful to explore how educators are using and 2003). Artifacts mediate how we think and act, which means modifying their spaces and how they make sense of this. The they are not merely aids for thinking and acting, but are influence of the physical spaces on school change is under constitutive of the thinking and acting itself (Wertsch, 1993). conceptualized, as Woolner and colleagues (2018) argue in For example, schedules affect where and with whom we their interpretive investigation of two schools. Their

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